Positron emission tomography (PET) is an imaging technique which provides both static and dynamic images of various internal organs. The basic technique involves injecting a positron emitting radio-isotope in the patient. The positron upon annihilation with an electron in the patient simultaneously releases two 511 keV gamma-rays. These gamma-rays are nearly 180 degrees apart and, upon detection in coincidence, provide information about the location of the radio-isotope. Computerized processing of data obtained in this manner provides an image of the distribution of the radio-isotope in the patient which can be used to study structure and function of different parts of an organ.PET images are particularly well suited for investigating metabolism in brain. Scintillation crystals are the basic gamma-ray detection elements in PET systems and a typical PET camera may use several thousand scintillation crystals. None of the commercially available scintillators satisfy all requirements for PET systems, and there is a real need for better scintillators to enable high flux PET imaging with better resolution. Recently, a new scintillator material, cerium doped lutetium orthoaluminate (LuAIO3:Ce or lutetium aluminum perovskite or LuAP) has shown considerable promise for PET. Hence the goal of the proposed research is to grow high quality LuAP crystals and evaluate their performance for PET. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATION: High Performance LuAP scintillators would find wide application in PET systems, which generally use several thousand crystals. In addition other applications such as non-destructive testing, bore-hole logging, nuclear spectroscopy, space physics, and explosive detection would also use these scintillators.